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Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon

Candidate for Member at Large, 2019


Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon is a History Instructor at Lee College in Houston, Texas, and a former secondary history teacher. She holds a BA in History from Swarthmore College (2012) and a MA in Regional Studies: Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia from Harvard University (2014). As a historian, her research interests include experience and subjectivity in Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s, minority experience and identity in the Soviet Union, and state projections of power in the Soviet “borderlands.” Her current work examines subjectivity during the 1932-1933 famines in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. She has presented her work at the Midwest Slavic Conference and the Northeast Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Conference, and she will be a panel member and roundtable discussant at ASEEES 2019.

St. Julian-Varnon’s passion is filling the gap in public understanding of the region through pedagogy and public history. She is a channel host for the Russian Studies and Central Asian Studies channels of New Books Network podcast consortium. She enjoys finding engaging works in field and sharing those works with a larger audience. As an African American in Slavic studies, she has shared her experiences and insights with students of color and the teachers of those students to help each group understand and prepare for the unique issues that people of color face in the region. Her goal is to increase the diversity and visibility of people of color throughout the fields represented by ASEEES.

She currently serves as the Communications Coordinator for the Swarthmore Black Alumni Network’s Executive Committee and as a member of Swarthmore College’s Alumni Council. St. Julian-Varnon looks forward to using her skills and experiences as an educator, researcher, and volunteer to serve the ASEEES community as a member of the Board.